Before Graduation, a Wedding Celebration

Seniors Who Met as Freshmen Will Tie the Knot Day Before Commencement

Yes, according to Keri Sullivan and Thomas Williams. The engineering and computer science students, who met at freshman orientation and became engaged last fall, will get married on Friday and then graduate together on Saturday.

He’s from Little Rock, she’s from Houston (and also has family in Pennsylvania), and that just made it practical to combine all the travel, preparations and accommodations for the two events. So they decided the Friday before graduation would be a great day for their wedding.

“And later I was looking at the calendar,” she said, “and I thought, ‘Wait, graduation’s on Saturday the 14th, so Friday’s the 13th.’ And I said, ‘Oh, that’s awesome. It’s my lucky day.’”

They even had a cute first meeting. When he ran out of conversation material at orientation, he asked her if she’d ever heard of a Möbius strip, a one-sided geometric surface formed by twisting a narrow, rectangular strip of paper 180 degrees and then connecting the two ends. She hadn’t. He made one from an orientation handout, and the conversation continued.

They started dating a month or so later, and when he proposed last fall, he had first covered the floor with a few hundred Möbius strips, as “a way to connect back to when we first met,” he said.

Graduation is far from the only milestone event awaiting Keri Sullivan and Thomas Williams this weekend. The two plan to wed Friday night, then head to campus the next day to walk in commencement exercises.